Copepods and/or Trigger-pods Prepacks

[jchmiel]

Has anyone have any experiance with either of these pre-packeged pods. I decided to get some(triggerpods) and put them in the fuge. They pretty much dwindled down to nothing within the week. I see none now and Ive looked pretty long.
Also, the other Copepods that I used to have about a year ago showed up just within the last two days. These are the big fat greyesh ones. Do you think they ate the little ones(triggers)?

 

[d-dzel]

Tigger pods are more for feeding other than having them reproduce in your fuge. What I mean is that they don't reproduce as quick and end up being eating by fish right away before having a chance to reproduce. I was looking into this before and I came upon some Tisbe pods. These are much, MUCH, smaller than Tigger pods but the reproduce pretty quick. I bought a small bottle of them for $10 or so and within a week or two they reproduced like crazy, my mandarin dragnonet and goby can keep up with them and I might end up pairing my madarin with another male just to try to keep my pods at bay. They seems to be taking over my DT

 

[cranberry]

+1
Tigriopus (Tiggers) does not reproduce well in our warmer tanks. Everytime they reproduce their offspring produce more and more males. This doesn't make for a good self-sustaining culture. If you were to put them in a colder tank they won't have the same downward spiral of numbers.
Tisbes are the BOMB. They do very well in warm tanks.
I'm a Rep for a company that sells these pods (I don't sell them) and we try to teach our clients to tell the hobbyists what each is geared towards. Tigriopus are more for target feeding and Tisbes are more for sustainable fuge populations. We sell both so there would be no other reason for me to recommend one over the other except to say they have two very distinct purposes. The Tigriopus still remain a more popular product because they are easier for the stores to maintain and the people like to be able to see them really red. Tisbes are super difficult to see and the Tigriopus are these bright jumping critters.
Try to always go for single species products... not ones with multiple pods species all jumbled up in the same container. There are several companies/hobbysists that provide them as such.

 

[jchmiel]

Thank you all for the replys. I wish to purchace some of these Tisbes. I could not find them on swf. Could anyone point me in the right direction. my lfs doesnt have them either just the tigger pods. also should I feed them if and when I get some? and what to feed them phytoplankton?

 

[cranberry]

I'm going to let others source them for you because my answer would be biased. But we're also not allowed to provide links to other sites.
Yes, feed them phyto.... but then again I'm a Copepod/Phyto Rep I really recommend single species products. Don't get Nannochloropsis because the cell walls are too tough to digest. If you could get your hands on Isochrysis, that's the absolute best for them. It's available in some stores but that would depend on your area. But this is if we are talking about an out of tank culture....
If you were going to put them right in your tank, dosing phyto is great but, they also love diatoms. That's why most people see a huge copepod population boom when they are starting up a new tank.... the diatoms are really high at that point. But like everything else, they will eventually dwindle in numbers as their numbers grow faster than the diatoms replenishes. That's where the dosing phyto comes in.....